Recently had an issue with an Oracle (11g) Scheduled Backup Job which had worked fine for a long time but started failing with the error "Initialization Error" when executing the RMAN script.

Name

Targets

Status

Started

Ended

Elapsed Time (seconds)

Execution: orcl01.server.local

orcl01.server.local

Initialization Error

07-Jul-2017 14:43:04 (UTC+01:00)

07-Jul-2017 14:46:09 (UTC+01:00)

185

Step: Initialize

orcl01.server.local

Succeeded

07-Jul-2017 12:00:16 BST

07-Jul-2017 12:00:18 BST

2

Step: Run RMAN Script

orcl01.server.local

Initialization Error

07-Jul-2017 14:43:09 BST

07-Jul-2017 14:46:09 BST

180

Restarting the server fixed the issue but is not ideal for a production machine.

Some Googling turned up a similar issue on an Oracle Community Forum (https://community.oracle.com/thread/1036886?db=5). As suggested in the post restarting the Oracle DB Console service fixed the issue without restarting the whole server.